Holocaust survivor shares story at Wilson College

Remembers the last kiss from his mother

Holocaust survivor Charles Middleberg talks Thursday at Wilson College, about his experiences as a boy living in France during the Nazi occupation. (Markell DeLoatch — Public Opinion)

Holocaust survivor Charles Middleberg's granddaughter, Jessica Middleberg (a Wilson student) center, and others listen to him speak about his experiences as a boy living in France during the Nazi occupation. (Markell DeLoatch — Public Opinion)

CHAMBERSBURG >> For anyone who doubts the Holocaust was real, survivor Charles Middleberg would like to know "where did the people go?"

A look around Alumnae Chapel in Thomson Hall at Wilson College on Thursday revealed tears falling down many faces as Middleberg described how he became just one of four members of his huge family to survive the Holocaust.

He, his younger brother, their father and a cousin of their father's were the only members of the extended family to see Nazi Germany surrender in 1945.

When the Germans invaded France and imposed the first rules on the Jewish people living there, 9-year-old Middleberg didn't immediately feel affected. But then came the ban on Jewish children attending school, which was soon followed by the requirement to wear the yellow Star of David on clothes. The Jewish restrictions coupled with food shortages and other war realities meant that "life became very, very difficult."

The first glimpse of what was to come was when Middleberg's dad showed up at the Paris city hall to report to required duty with the German military, and found 90,000 other men. Several months after being shipped off to a labor camp where the only work was digging holes and filling them back up, his family stopped receiving their monthly call to go visit. That was the end of summer in 1941.

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"We soon found out what happened. They had emptied the camp. Shipped the men in cattle cars to destinations unknown," Middleberg said.

Middleberg, his brother and their mother lived a careful life. When their mother heard that there would soon be a huge raid on Jewish households in the city, she made an arrangement with a janitor in their building to hide away in a storage space beneath a trap door. They got the call — the rapping of the janitor's peg leg — and made a successful escape.

On a tricky mission to get some bread for his hungry, hiding family, Middleberg saw for himself the raid's "mayhem," and watched as family members were ripped from their homes as German soldiers and cooperating French police tossed them into carts in the street.

Soon after, Middleberg and his brother found themselves at the sanctuary that would be the beginning of their road to survival — a farm on the French countryside. They had kissed their mother goodbye before heading to a train station with a woman who was apparently making it her mission to save children from the Germans.

The woman who brought them there one day returned with a letter.

"I don't know why, but I felt the minute she handed me the letter that this is not good news," Middleberg said. His mother's ring fell out as he opened the letter, which was from a woman in Paris who wrote that she watched his mother being taken away.

Middleberg had already talked about how he thought his mother was the "smartest, brightest woman that ever lived." Thinking she was sure to escape, the now 12-year-old decided that he and his brother should go back to Paris so they would be there when she returned.

They arrived at the home of the woman who wrote the letter, who had a family and owned a cafe. For the rest of the war, the two boys lived life quietly, and were even baptized as Catholics.

"We lived that way until the Allies liberated the city of Paris in August 1944. Everybody was in incredible elation, singing and dancing. As far as my little brother and I, we thought, OK that's it, the war's over. Mom and Dad are coming back and we're gonna get back together," Middleberg said.

But the war did not officially end for months, when the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad.

Middleberg and his brother got half of what they wished for.

"My dad was one of the miracles of this (the Holocaust). Exactly a year after liberation of Paris ... my brother and I were reunited with our dad," Middleberg said, before pausing and sharing that the day he and his brother kissed their mother before leaving for the farm in the countryside was the last time they saw her.

Middleberg said the family later learned, thanks to a man who compiled Nazi records from the camps, that his mother was part of a convoy that was sent directly to the gas chambers upon stepping off the train at Auschwitz, one of the most well-known concentration camps.

Middleberg has spent the past 17 years telling his story. He wants people to know that the Holocaust did happen and was very real. He emphasizes to children that nothing good comes out of hatred.

"Tolerance is what I teach," he said.

Middleberg, his brother and father moved to America in 1950. A year later, the love of Middleberg's life followed, and they married and created a big family of their own.

Before he and his brother left for the countryside, their mother had packed a trunk full of personal possessions and hid it in their apartment building. Middleberg still has the trunk today. He does not have most of the items in it, but he does have a picture of him, his brother and parents, taken when life was still "peaceful."

The family he has created and his memories of the family he had give Middleberg "revenge on Hitler."